Hi Folks,
I passed my exam over the weekend. Honored to be a certified PMP!
My prep strategy -
Give yourself an 8 week period - the last 2 weeks entirely focused on refreshing your knowledge on each area and process by testing yourself on the PM Prepcast simulator and quizzes.
1. Attended the PMP sessions - PMP project outline specific ones by Knowledgehut led instructor. This was to get an idea about the changes to the approach for overall outline and to understand the tasks under each domain.
2. Read Rita Mulcahy's 10th edition by knowledge area (thrice) to gain more insight into each area other than what I already knew as a PM working in my organization.
3. Multiple views of Ricardo Vargas's video and pmbok workflow
3. My suggestion is to have the TTO alongside you when you are reading each knowledge area - this gives you a good idea about the steps in each process, techniques, outputs - what all sorts of analysis, documents are there, etc
4. Once I covered a knowledge area, I took a PM Prepcast quiz of 50-100 questions including some questions which are a part of the PMP Exam in Prepcast.
5. Review the knowledge area steps to how it is in - Waterfall (Predictive), Agile (adaptive) as well as Hybrid approaches of project management. This helps prepare you to come back with your own set of questions and clarifications. Seek those answers through PMP forums if you are unsure.
6. Once I covered all the knowledge areas, re-reviewed the Integration Knowledge area and TTO.
7. Re-reviewed the TTO for all.
8. Now I attempted the PMP exam 1, 2 - I didn't do too well at first - because I wasn't so used to giving an exam for 3-4 hrs and also that I was spending too much time on a question. I could only do around 140 questions in my first attempt. I reviewed the questions which I had answered incorrectly and understood the reasons outlined.
9. I now studied the Agile guide to understand any differences in my understanding of what I already knew as PSM, Safe Agilist. I went through some of the less known Agile practices that I wasnt aware of.
10. Spent a few days on Hybrid approaches for each phase to get an idea of what are some of the best practices.
11. I now attempted the PMP exam 3 and 4. I was getting better results.
12. I revised my knowledge areas again and attempted questions on Study Hall - found them to be more vague and the answers to some of them were not convincing. The score had me a bit anxious as I was now a bit worried.
13. I decided to continue with Prepcast simulator exams and quizzes along with Rita's book and questions at the end.
14. On exam day do take those breaks of 10 minutes to refresh your mind and keep yourself hydrated. I would also keep a close watch on the timer - you should keep atleast 75-80 minutes for the last set of 60 questions else you may end up not answering all the questions. The strategy of elimination of bad answers is another that definitely helped. Make sure to read each sentence carefully.
The PM PrepCast simulator is excellent, critical piece of the strategy.
Best of success to you and thanks again PM PrepCast!
